


Deflagrare

by nimic



Category: Bleach
Genre: Apathy, Burnout - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 03:31:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14729141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimic/pseuds/nimic
Summary: He's like magnesium, he thinks. He burns strong and blinding, but not long enough.Ichigo tries to deal with life without his powers. Emphasis ontries.





	Deflagrare

Ichigo is seventeen when the war with Aizen ends. He is seventeen and powerless and filled with a strange intangible pain. After everything that had happened, everything he’d been through, he’d thought there would be something more solid left of it. He feels as though his body should be aching, in different places and in different ways, in his bones and under his skin. His body isn’t used to being uninjured, and it has never been more obvious than now. Injuries ghost over him like mist, clear as day but ever out of reach. He’s tempted to start picking fights again, to make the bruises and scrapes real like they used to be, but he has one final year of highschool left. One year to drag his grades back up to medical-school acceptable. One year before he can move on to his painfully human future.

He manages top five in the school, top ten in the district, but his passion and determination have been fizzling out for a while now. They’re like embers keeping him just shy of freezing.

He can’t remember how long it’s been since he wrote the entrance exam for TōDai’s medical department, but the results are out today and a small miracle has him at the site early enough to beat the crowd.

Ichigo is eighteen, and the sight of his name and identification number on the board of acceptance makes him feel alive.

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t last. It couldn’t possibly have. It takes him a year and a half to crash.

 

* * *

 

He pushes himself, more than he, personally, should, but no more than he had in the past. No more than most other people. He gets a part time job because he likes being independant. He gets it because somewhere, deep down, despite vague hopes and some remaining shred of self confidence, he knows the scholarship money won’t last (knows _he_ won’t last). He knows other people can balance things just right, knows people who are balancing things perfectly right now, knows that he’d been able to balance things adequately in the past, that he _should be able to do it now, god, why can’t he just-_

The last semester was rough. The break until the current one was too short, somehow. The stress never fully left him, so when _this_ semester starts, he’s already running on empty.

 _Burnout_ , they call it. _Months to recover_ , they say.

The words feel like a death sentence.

 

* * *

 

He tries, really he does. He shows up to all his classes and doesn’t take any notes. Shows up to work and spaces out more than he should, but not so much he can’t get away with it. It’s easier when other people need him. It’s harder on his own.

He gets back to the dorm room he shares with some guy whose name he hasn’t bothered to learn and goes straight to his bed most days. Sometimes they talk, sometimes he walks in with earphones and no music playing because he _can’t_ talk.

“When do you even get your coursework done man? I swear I’ve only seen you work here like twice,” his roommate asks once, and Ichigo laughs.

“I work between classes and stuff, get up in the middle of the night sometimes. I just need to take it easy for a bit before I get into it,” he lies. “I get more work done at the library than I do here.”

They’re not lies _per se_ , which is why his roommate accepts the answers easily, despite Ichigo’s inability to lie properly. It’s just- he makes himself sound more responsible, more on top of his things. He hears his own words playing in his head, hears himself sound like he has some sort of plan, a schedule he sticks to that keeps everything on track. He’s a fucking mess, though. He drags himself to the library in hopes that the atmosphere will get him in the groove of things, and usually manages a page of work per hour on a good day. He tries to finish labs and reports in class, during breaks, using Google Docs on his phone when his laptop isn’t handy.

He’s doing the bare minimum, somehow. Not exactly _scraping_ by, but not far off. Straight Bs are okay, but a wringing in his chest makes it feels like failure (it is).

The bare minimum used to be easy, and that was how he’d excelled. Put in a little extra work. Put in more extra work if it was particularly difficult. Now everything is hard, exhausting. The words he reads don’t make sense until the fifth time he goes over them. The math he writes looks fake, like a trick of light, even when his calculator spits out the same numbers for the third time in a row. It’s driving him insane and seeping at his determination.

He feels flames sputtering in his chest, and doesn’t know how to keep them alive anymore.

 

**Author's Note:**

> might.. add more.... but as of yet i have no plans for where to take this ; - ;


End file.
